Using distributed magnetometry in navigation of heavy launchers and space vehicles

Abstract

Recently, a new technique has emerged to address the general problem of reconstructing the inertial velocity of a rigid body moving in a magnetically disturbed region. The contribution of this paper is to apply the developed method, in a prospective spirit, to a case of space navigation in view of estimating the performance improvement that could be obtained using state-of-the-art magnetometer technology onboard heavy launchers and other space vehicles. The main underlying idea of the approach is to estimate the inertial velocity by readings of the magnetic field at spatially distributed (known) locations on the rigid body. Mathematically, through a chain-rule differentiation involving variables commonly appearing in classic inertial navigation, an estimate of this velocity can be obtained. In this paper, we show the potential of this method in the field of navigation of heavy launchers passing through particular regions of the Earth magnetosphere as considered, e.g., for upcoming Galileo missions. Numerical results based on the specifications of candidate embedded magnetic sensors stress the relevance of the approach